I woke up in a hardcore progression guild

I had wanted to post last week to update how our 10man Naxx runs where going. This week starts our 4th week raiding in our new guild. A quick recap of events thus far:

A month ago about 10 of from our old guild were not satisfied with the raiding setup. Our GM was picking his friends over people who were either better geared, better skilled or both. So we do a mass exodus and form our own guild. As I said it was a core group of about 10, we picked up a couple more and volia! New guild born.

Week 1 in Naxx I would sum up with one word: brutal. We manage to clear all 4 wings but can not down Sappiron.

Week 2, I think everyone was a bit amazed at our improvement. Of course we had some better gear and the experience. So, we coast thru the 4 wings, only a couple of wipes but a huge improvement. We get to Sappiron and we get a reality check. He's tough but in the end we down him and then have similar issues with Kel'Thazd but also manage to down him. Huge accomplishment for our guild. During this time, we are doing 10man OS and VoA. Cleaning them up no issues. We also start getting into 25 man OS runs. At this point we do not have enough geared 80s to fill but about half the spots. But no worries, we join up with another guild we have close ties to and we are clearing OS no problems. Same with 25 man VoA.

Week 3(last week). No issues in 10man Naxx, we blew through all 4 wings. Admittedly we did still have a bit of issues with the last two bosses still, but we progress so that's good. For me personally, it was a great week gear wise. I end up with: Cloak of Armed Strife, Deflection Band and a trash drop of Minions Bracers from 10man. I also finally get the Red Sword of Courage to drop after 16 runs in UP. Ok, so I'm pumped obviously. We decide to try a 25man Naxx run with the other guild, just to see how we do. We start in Spider wing and I get Heritage off Anub'Rekhan. We proceed to down the rest in the Spider, Plague wing and Patchwerk. We stop there for the week. Both our GM and other guild's people are pretty impressed by our success. That was a damn good week

Last night starts Week 4 for our guild. I guess I hadn't been paying attention because we have been running non-stop and on days we don't run we usually do mat collections for upcoming runs. But we have a whole slew of new people joined. So, our GM says lets try 25man Naxx this go round. We have enough people to fill 21 spots, we pug(I use this very loosly here) four from the guild we run with.

Going in our GM informs us alot of people are new and under geared. Basically, this is trial run to see how we do as a guild. Some people were in quest blues, maybe 1 or 2 epics, some even in PvP. A few had run some or part of Naxx, some this was there first foot inside. So our GM is telling everyone not to get discouraged if it's a bloodbath, he just wants to evaluate some of the new people as well as see how others have progressed. I'd say he was more than happy with the run. And this was also without our best healer not there, so really good. Granted the core of us(9) and the four from the other guild are pretty well geared and in some parts we have to carry a few, not to mention the lag was brutal(thanks for the optimization Blizzard!). But the DPS overall was very impressive. Just about all the DPS were above 2K. We carried 5 healers and 4 tanks as well. All of us tanks took turns on a boss, then let someone else MT it. Good experience for the new people. So in the end we only get the Plague wing & Patchwerk down. This was mainly due to time and a later start. We suffer only 2 wipes, one in the slime room before Patchwerk due to the new people not understanding that we let range handle them. And then on Patchwerk himself, as we let the 2 new tanks(1 warrior & 1 feral) handle it. The feral was unsure when to pick him up as the OT and basically he one shoted the other tank and proceed to do the same to 3-4 others before we could even get to him. But, overall a stellar run.

Tonight we pay a visit to Sathirion in a 25man OS raid. After last nights run our GM gathers all of us officers together to discuss the run and informing us that 3 of the 4 in the other guild have decided to join us. And more than likely the 4th also, who is a H. Pally who we desperately need for his buffs. So over the course of the last 3 weeks, we've tripled in size.

The plan of action is now doing scheduled 25 mans every week. 10mans are optional based on availability and schedules. I looked at our guild calendar and almost everyday is filled with something. I joking said to our GM, "Hey I see a couple of blank time frames, I think I'll schedule some heroic runs as to fill all slots." He then says, that's a great idea to get some of the new players better geared. Yikes! I did it now..lol...I'm having a hard time even getting time to do the Hodir dailies or collect herbs.

Anyways, now you see where the title came from. I went from not raiding at all, to in the span of a month not having any spare time IG. I realized this once my girlfriend, who plays a hunter in our guild starts bugging me to sign up for runs so I don't lose my spot..lol...I don't really like labels like "hardcore" or "casual", but I guess I'm in the later now, as I'm raiding 5+ days a week now. We are also going with the SK loot system, as to be fair to everyone investing the time.

It's funny how things change in WoW so quickly, this will probably not last forever I realize that. But for now it's a hell of a lot of fun to be a tank in my guild. I'm lucky to be surrounded by alot of really skilled players and even nicer people.

Thanks for reading this far, I'll try to update again in the next week or two.

Next stop: EoE and Malygos*gulps*